Is this VPS, 3 vCPU / 3 GB RAM / 100 GB SSD / Linux Server, sufficient for 50 students?

Is this VPS, 3 vCPU / 3 GB RAM / 100 GB SSD / Linux Server, sufficient for 50 students?

by Jason Coetzee -
Number of replies: 6

Hey All,

So I am a complete newbie, been looking through the forums and information. Excited to have been tasked with getting moodle setup, to help my sons school. They are a small School under 50 students, the school specializes helping getting kids back on track with their schooling and helping them in areas where they have fallen short, getting the parents involved with what they are covering and how they are doing...

So my question is, how do you eat an elephant? and which sauce would go well with it smile

Serious note:

I have looked through as much as I can, and this was my plan. Based on the fact they have two small campuses, geographically far from each other, I was planning on using a hosted vps service: 3 vcores, 3gb RAM, 100gb SSD, installed on Linux Server, using cpanel (I know you don't recommend it, but I was going for simple install).  The VPS will have a backup running and is easily up-gradable, if needed for growth. The VPS service is located in the same country as the school. 

Concurrent users will be around  20-30. Videos will be links to Youtube, and documents will be teacher uploaded, so from my understanding this will quite a basic setup. Do you think I am on the right track any other suggestion? (This project we hope to have up and fully running begging of next year).

Thank you in advance .

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In reply to Jason Coetzee

Is this VPS, 3 vCPU / 3 GB RAM / 100 GB SSD / Linux Server, sufficient for 50 students?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi

For 50 students you can take almost any server, provided that they are not malconfigured. So I would say, even the smallest VPS, 1 vCPU / 2 GB RAM / SSD, will suffice.

I can not judge the effect of Cpanel, never use them. I am talking of the Unix Shell access.

The other thing, the SSD storage, is not directly available to the VPS. The VPS gets a virtual partition created in the virtualization host. Still the SSD technology offers faster access than conventional SATA drives.

YouTube videos will be served directly, so your Moodle is not involved in it.

I assume the two campuses need _one_ Moodle, because some teachers and students are the same. If this is not a condition, the "portable Moodle server" MoodleBox would be a cheap and handy solution.

There is a dedicated forum for performance questions, the Hardware and performance forum. You might want to skim through the recent discussions there.

P.S. Pl. notice the modified subject line.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Is this VPS, 3 vCPU / 3 GB RAM / 100 GB SSD / Linux Server, sufficient for 50 students?

by Jason Coetzee -
Thank you for such a prompt reply, i have been trolling through the hardware forum, you guys are next level, hopefully I will catch up quickly.
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In reply to Jason Coetzee

Re: Before you post... read this...

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers
My needs are slightly greater than yours. I have around 10-12 courses each year, with around 500 students each year. I do this myself on a VPS, very similar to what you descibe: Linux, 4GB RAM, 120GB storage, regular drive (no SSD), and my Moodle runs well. Yes, I use cPanel (and WHM) since I am not a server-type guy, and I recommend it for newbies. Yes, the more you learn about Linux, the better. But learning Moodle could be more important. I do my own backups, but it is fine if you want to pay for a backup service.

Yes, I use many videos in my courses, but all are linked. Right now, I am experimenting with moving my videos to my VPS, since they are my own videos (as my university's video server is going away soon.) I suggest that you do not upload videos into your Moodle, otherwise your backups will grow beyond control.

You seem to be on target. Consider getting a MoodleCloud account for you (and maybe even your instructors) and/or installing Moodle on your local computer, so that you can experiment. Also, on some VPSs, you can "delete" and starts over. This could be a way for you to experiment.

Here is an important item: DO NOT install Moodle with a cPanel one-step installer. Learn how to install Moodle from scratch! It is not that hard to do, and it will provide you long-term (educational) benefits.
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In reply to Jason Coetzee

Re: Is this VPS, 3 vCPU / 3 GB RAM / 100 GB SSD / Linux Server, sufficient for 50 students?

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Splitting to create its own discussion and moving to Hardware and performance forum...
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In reply to Jason Coetzee

Re: Is this VPS, 3 vCPU / 3 GB RAM / 100 GB SSD / Linux Server, sufficient for 50 students?

by James Steerpike -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

I have a 1 gig 1 vCPU Droplet from Digital Ocean with an extra 1Gb of swap space. I regularly ask up to 50 students to do a quiz together in class as an exercise and encourage them to have two browser windows  open - one for the work I have just presented and one for the quiz. The network connection to a server in another country is sometimes the choke point but the server itself is responsive and monitoring it shows it is not under stress. If anything, you are over providing and if cash is short and you can upgrade easily, you could start lower and test with  a representative group.

I would definitely recommend avoiding cPanel.  The instructions for installing Moodle on Ubuntu  (Step-by-step_Installation_Guide_for_Ubuntu) are very clear. Follow them carefully and you can't go wrong. They do look a little horrendous but can be just copied and pasted.

One more thing - pay attention to backups. They aren't important until the horrible day your server dies/disappears and then it is too late. I automatically backup offsite to Dropbox directly from my Linux box,

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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Is this VPS, 3 vCPU / 3 GB RAM / 100 GB SSD / Linux Server, sufficient for 50 students?

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers
James, your post reminded me that when some people refer to cPanel, they might be talking about the "one-click" install. Which I do not recommend. However, in my case, I sometimes use some of the other utilities that cPanel provides, such as creating the database, doing things from phpMyAdmin, rebooting the server, email, turning on php modules, etc.
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